Chapter 9
On the way home We forgot something
All the goodbyes were said and all the kisses and nappies exchanged
Starbug boomed out of existence via the new and improved Holly drive. And due to a little tampering Ace did with holly and the hop the crew will have very little memory of what had occurred.
"It's a fact that humans can't handle child separation well," Stated Kryten, who consulted his Human Relationship chip. "They always feel guilty and second guess themselves, forever thinking; Is there something more important that I have to do in the universe than raise my children?"
"You just won't be able to cope," Kryten explained to his three crew mates.
"But our minds too?" Questioned Rimmer. "Is that really necessary?"
"Of course," Holly Chimed in. "In the past we learned the smallest incongruity will set us off on a quest for the truth.
Whether we want to know it."
"Or not." Lister added still unaccustomed to Holly's new female form.
"Hey I'm all for it," announced the Cat. "I had it all, everything my heart desired fulfilled. Until dog food face here and alphabet heads sexier self took it away from me." The Cat looked off at something in his minds' eye which made him smile, but soon seemed to lose it's appeal and his face reflected his thoughts.
"The last thing I want to remember is this," he finished.
"OK I'll set our memories to start exactly six weeks from when you rescued me from the Nova Five. Minus the boys of course."
"You mean I won't have any memory of the boys at all? I don't know if I
could deal with that?"
"You wouldn't have to," Rimmer intervened. "We'll program your mind not to notice. Isn't that right Kryten?"
"Not exactly Mr. Rimmer Sir. We will all have a limited memory of these experiences but slightly altered. Where our experiences and the knowledge we gained over this past year will not be clear or positive in our conscience minds, since our memories will have been altered. But our sub conscience minds will hold on to these experiences and all their benefits."
"Benefits?" Rimmer questioned. "What possible benefits can we have gained here, that we won't be able to remember, be of any use to us, never mind benefit us?"
"Well at a very basic level all the knowledge that Mr. Lister gained working with his other self. He won't be able to remember where he learned these
skills, but never the less he will demonstrate abilities that he acquired during our travels and escapades over these last months. We all will demonstrate abilities that we hadn't before, with no exact memory of where or how we obtained them."
"You mean that Rimmer might have actually learned something from meeting all his various incarnations, and that this self realization will
hold in his sub conscience when we're back in our reality. Somehow he won't be quite the annoying weasly maggot that he's been all his life?"
"Let's not go overboard sir. There's only so much traveling pell mell
through dimensions, delivering babies, helping fight evil and saving a few civilizations along the way, can do for Mr. Rimmer."
"I guess you were asking for too much bud," the Cat chimed in.
The four were seated in Starbug's cockpit when Lister realized he couldn't go through with it.
He couldn't leave his children behind.
Leaping from his seat and bolting out the cockpit door, towards the dimension omniverter, he knew he wasn't going to make it. He was six seconds too late.
That was enough.
Frozen in time within a stasis field that now engulfed the whole of Starbug, Lister and the others once again became an event mass with a probability of zero.
When he would finally return to his own dimension, like the others, he will not have these memories.
Once safely in their own dimension and the crew safe, Holly and Kryten would erase even these final memories. And none would be the wiser.
All would have slightly altered memories of the event. Somehow having Jim and Bexly choose their exile to the FemVerse, and being raised by their mother. Er Father. Never mind, you get the idea.
RED DWARF THE LOST YEARS, AND BABIES. AND THE FINDING OF THE CAT RACE, AND A FEMALE ACE RIMMER PLUS MUCH MUCH MORE.
I KNOW! HOW ABOUT THIS:
RED DWARF III
THE SAGA CONTINUUMS
THE STORY SO FAR...
Three million years in the future Dave Lister, the last human being alive, discovers he is pregnant after a liaison with his female self in a parallel universe.
His pregnancy concludes with the successful delivery of twin boys, Jim and Bexly. However, because they were conceived in another universe, with different physical laws, they suffer from highly rated growth accelerated growth rates, and are both eighteen within three days of being born. In order to save their lives, Lister returns them to their universe of their origin where they are reunited with their father (a woman) and are able to lead comparatively normal lives.
Well, as normal as you can be if you've been born in a parallel universe and your father's a woman and your mother's a man and your eighteen years old within three days of your birth. Shortly afterwards, Kryten, the service mechanoid who'd left the ship after being rescued from his own crashed vessel, the Nova Five, is found in pieces after his bike crash-lands into an asteroid. Lister rebuilds the 'noid, but is unable to recapture his former personality.
Meanwhile, Holly, the increasingly erratic Red Dwarf computer, performs a head sex change operation on himself. He bases his new face on Hilly, a female computer with whom he'd once fallen madly in love.
AND NOW THE SAGAS CONTINUUMS...
RED DWARF III
THE SAME GENERATION
-NEARLY